myrmidon

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A soldier or a subordinate civil officer who executes orders of a superior without protest or pity; -- sometimes applied to bailiffs, constables, etc.

Etymologies

Latin Myrmidones, from Ancient Greek Μυρμιδόνες (Myrmidones), a tribe of warriors led by Achilles to the Trojan War. Folk etymology in Ovid's time derived the tribe's name from μυρμηδών ("ant-nest", from μύρμηξ, "ant"). (Wiktionary)

Examples

He is one of those writers who finds the exact word for absolutely everything, which gives his prose an oddly poetic effect, full of terms like ‘triforium’ and ‘chasuble’, ‘pontificalia’ and ‘myrmidon’.

The husbands clutching their hands for succor, in hopes that their own bell-ends wouldn't swell like the proverbial baby's arm holding a poisonous apple and kill them from the pecker up, bore foreheads, fiveheads even, that could only be described as battlefields depicting their hairlines' loss of ground under withering fire from the pussywhipping myrmidon at their sides.

The first myrmidon neither knew nor cared whether this reticence was born of a desire to save their own lives, or superstitious dread of some Gorn fertility goddess, or misgivings about the fate of the new warrior caste he still dreamed of building even now.

“An impediment, and a slaver,” she said, involuntarily allowing her own teeth to emerge in a long-suppressed expression of hostility as she used the maneuvering thrusters to dislodge the hated second myrmidon.

Although the first myrmidon appeared as authoritative and steady as ever, his facial and cranial scales seemed to be growing discolored, graying slightly around the edges as though he were finally beginning to succumb to the radiation exposure that he and his troopers had experienced at Sazssgrerrn.

Word visualization

Comments

They genuflected together, and the Mass began. Every moment the ceremony gained in splendour. If it was the feast of a great saint, the enthroned abbot was arrayed by his myrmidons in the pontificalia.

The landlord, who was trying if he could not sing in the kitchen louder than she could scream in the parlour, and swore he heard no music but his own, was at last obliged to introduce the myrmidons of the police to the distressed lady, just in time to rescue her from the necessity of a surrender at discretion.